Last month I took the family to Washington DC. We stayed at the K Street Hyatt Place, conveniently located a couple of blocks north of the White House. It’s a Category 3, which by PFD family standards is a Category 7. The hotel was very nice, every staff member we interacted with was extremely friendly and capable, and overall the hotel was great, except… the glass-walled bathroom.
Other bloggers have spoken out against the scourge of excessively revealing bathrooms, so I’m not breaking new ground in saying that I am not a fan of this trend in hotel bathroom design. But the point bears repeating: when you have your mother-in-law along on a trip, as I did, glass walls and doors such as the one in the Hyatt Place bathroom are not welcome, even if they’re translucent. I’ll grant you that they look lovely and they make for better pictures, but generally speaking light should not be transmitted through the doors or the walls of a hotel bathroom.
Contrast this bathroom to the one at the Comfort Suites I just stayed at in Asheville on a $65/night rate from Priceline (which is the first time I’ve paid for a hotel in years, incidentally). It had a good ol’ fashioned opaque door, plus the hot water was scalding and the water pressure was superior to what I have in my house. In other words, it’s almost a perfect hotel bathroom. There’s no bathroom fan, but that just means more steam for my hot shower.
Most big companies these days have market research teams that survey every aspect of the customer experience in order to give people what they think they want, so I can’t help but wonder who’s giving the green light for these bathrooms and why.
I recently stayed at a Doubletree along the Med coast of Spain east of Marbella and their toilet is actually at the end of a curvy hallway off the bedroom – no door, no glass, no nothing. Not even a light in the area so you are as exposed as possible and can’t even really see the things normal humans typically need to see when using the toilet. And this was a suite too. It was such a stupid hotel (industrial chic with a side of Ikea junk – awful rooms) that we cut short our stay and checked into a NH hotel a few miles away.
Same story …multiple times. Each time I ask hotel staff to put up a spring rod with a curtain. They are always clearly prepared (as I’m sure many others have the same complaint) and the rod/curtain is up in only a few minutes.
I agree with this. Certain hotels come to mind like the BMW hotel in Austria (open bathroom), The Radisson hotel in Rome (suites have open shower in middle of room). It’s just stupid. It’s like booking a $50 room at the local motel where you get free breakfast and internet but you pay $500 for a fancy hotel and they charge you for breakfast and internet. Stupid.